Some cool tees for the lady. There was a nice shop in the shopping mall close to the hotel, where Vanja found some clothes. She’s always told me how difficult it can be for women to shop clothes since the sizes can vary so much, depending on the brand. This time I got to see this for myself.. she shopped clothes there and most of them in size Medium, but one t-shirt had to be bought in Small, and one had to be bought in Large. The photo below displays a t-shirt size Small (to the left) and the one to the right is Large (and it’s even smaller than the Small one! Yikes). I’ve experienced some slight differences in clothing sizes for men too (especially when I shop online), but not anything like this. Makes you wonder why the heck a certain size can’t have a universal standard.

Other stuff:

And we found a big Totoro pillow in an anime shop in the mall by the hotel! We just had to bring him home with us, of course.

In the haunted capital of Scotland there’s several ghost-related tours. During this visit we checked out two of them. The Ghost Bus and City of the Dead tour. And we loved them both!

That’s cute! Look at the last three digits on the phone number.

The tour guide and the bus driver. The guide did a fantastic job to conduct the tour. His acting reminded me about Johnny Depp, so no wonder the guy loved it. The driver wasn’t bad, either. Fun!

The St Cuthbert’s Cemetery and church, one of the haunted spots in Edinburgh that the bus stopped by. The place is said to be haunted by “a little girl” (a demon, in other words). We’ll explore this place further in our next visit (because yeah, we’ll definitely go back to the place!). The Ghost Bus Tour took drove by several places while the guide told us it’s stories (and added a bit of fun comedy along the ride, probably to ease the tension a bit). The bus had two floors (we were on the upper floor) so he would go up and down on each of them in order to put on a show to everyone (plus, you could see his face on a screen while he was talking).

A really enjoyable ride and highly recommended if you should ever visit Edinburgh and is into ghost stories and such.

The Vaults / The Caves (City of the Dead Tour)

The City of the Dead tour is the only one where you will get access to the famous Edinburgh Vaults (or, at least parts of it) and the Covenanter’s prison. The tour’s starting post was at Mercat Cross in Royal Mile. We attended with the latest one, 10 pm.

The alley where you find the entry to the vaults. Niddry Street South is about 150 metres from the Royal Mile. (These pictures were taken the day after.)

The last door to the right (or left in the picture). The entrance to the Niddry Street Vaults felt kind of surreal…you went through this backyard of a pub/club, and then you were suddenly at the entrance of a part of the Edinburgh Vaults. Weird.

While inside, the tour guide told us stories about the place, and explained the skeletons under the stairs which were placed there just for show (there was even a spider skeleton there, which of course makes no sense at all). Further inside the vaults the guide held a candle, and we would stand inside the complete darkness when he blew it out as this could “make the ghosts contact us”. Nothing happened, though.

The tour also took us to Greyfriars, and into the famous Covenanter’s prison. The guide did an excellent job on telling the background stories, and made a really great atmosphere. Highly recommended!

Greyfriars(or GreyFEARS, as I choose to call it, because it’s easier to say with my corny norwegian accent) is a cemetery that was established around 1561-1562. It should be on everybody’s checklist while visiting Edinburgh.

Greyfriars is known for being one of the “best” documented haunted places in Scotland. Several paranormal investigators have been there, including for example Ghost Adventures from Travel Channel. People often claim that they have gotten scratches during their visit, disembodied voices have been heard, there are supposedly “cold spots”, strange smells, feeling of extreme unease, people have been passing out, and a lot of the typical stuff a “demonic landmark” is supposed to be able to do to you. There’s even been performed two exorcisms at this place.

The cemetery is said to be haunted by Sir George Mackenzie who is buried in Scotland’s most expensive mausoleum, and a bunch of covenanters who is buried in the locked area called Covenanter’s Prison. As I have mentioned before in my first Q&A round, I’m not entirely convinced there are such a thing as “ghosts” (I’ve actually gotten more and more sceptic about the whole thing over the years, even though I still find the stories and myths to be inspiring and exciting). However, despite this I’m not so sure I’d be willing to stick around in that area for too long…

Here are two stories from the cemetery: The first one occured one rainy night in 1999, and is about a homeless man who broke into Mackenzie’s mausoleum to seek shelter. After breaking in, he found the chamber where the coffin of Mackenzie was contained. Like the mindset of any homeless hobo, he believed the coffin would be filled with treasure and valuables and decided to break into it. It was pitch black inside, and things escalated when he stumbled and fell into a pit filled with bones from plague victims. The man ran out of the mausoleum, terrified and screaming according to one witness.

The other story occured in 2004, when two teenagers broke into the Mackenzie mausoleum. Poor dude never gets to rest in peace! However, considering what he did to the covenanters, which rightfully earned him the nickname “Bluidy Mackenzie” (Bloody Mackenzie”) it might be easier to not feel that much pity for him. Anyway: they broke into his coffin and cut his corpse’s head off. They took it out of the tomb and placed it on the steps at the giftshop next to the graveyard gates. An archeologist from the National Museum had to come and return it. Article archive from 2004: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/apr/24/ukcrime.scotland

George Mackenzie’s mausoleum.

By zooming in you can see the stairs that leads to the tomb where those teenagers broke in. Looking closely, you can also see a skullhead decoration (Memento Mori) on what to seems to be his coffin.

Some latin letters on the wall.

Let’s take a look at the cemetery from the start. Here we have Greyfriars Bobby’s Bar, and to the left is the gates to the cemetery.

Greyfriars Bobby Memorial Statue on the sidewalk across the Bar.

The cemetery gates.

And who is this dog named Bobby, you may ask? Why does he have his own statue and a Bar named after him? Well, he has nothing to do with the paranormal aspects of the cemetery, his connection to the place is something different. It’s quite sad, but a somewhat bittersweet story.

Bobby was a Skye Terrier, born a hundred and fifty years ago. He belonged to a Edinburgh policeman named John Gray. Bobby and John were best friends and inseparable, quite literally. One winter, John fell into a terrible fever. Bobby tried to keep him warm by snuggling close to him, but John eventually died. Bobby refused to leave his dead master, and followed the funeral procession to Greyfriars Cemetery. And over 14 years he’s said to have guarded John’s grave. James Brown, the gardener, took care of Bobby who’s also buried in Greyfriars.

When Bobby died, he was buried in a flowerpot in the cemetery. At Huntly House Museum in Edinburgh you’ll see his collar, his bowl and a real photo of him.

The closed gate to the Covenanter’s Prison.

The closed area seen from the gate. This is the section where most of the paranormal stuff takes place, such as scratchmarks and people fainting. This section also contains the “Black Mausoleum”, where dead animals can sometimes be found in front of. The area has been exorcised twice, and is only allowed to be entered during the City of the Dead tour.

The Royal Mile is the street which stretches from the Edinburgh Castle through the Old Town. Plain and simple. It’s a great place to explore, and despite it being a hot summer day, it even had a Christmas Shop!

We’ve just gotten back home from a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland (from Monday 4th June to Friday 8th June). We had a great time, there were lots to do and see so I will spread it over several blog posts.

First off, I’ll start with the hotel: “The Old Waverley Hotel”. With a history dating back to 1848, this 3-star hotel really had a lot of charm and was located in Princes Street (so, pretty close to everything). Our room had a great view to both the Edinburgh Castle and the Scott Monument right outside our window.

After four years in service my old Hyundai (1999 Elantra) had to be sent to the wrecking yard due to not passing the biennial vehicle inspection (called “EU kontroll” here in Norway). It didn’t come as much of a surprise, but it was still a little sad to see my Hyundai go to car heaven…

I initially thought the process of finding a new car before christmas would be hell, but I was really lucky and got myself a nice Volkswagen Golf, 2001 model, and it’s in pretty good shape. Vanja and I had our first road trip with it yesterday. We went to a place called Egersund, which is approx. a 2 hour drive from Stavanger where we live. Egersund is a nice little place, and you get to see some of that beautiful norwegian nature on the way. Here’s a few photos:

Not much snow, but the fog made me stop and take some photos of the beautiful landscape.

I finally made a photo book dedicated to Disneyland Paris, since we visit the place every time we’re in Paris. Some of the photos are from our first trip, which was from 4th June – 14th June 2012 (in time for their 20th anniversary) up until our latest trip, which was from 02 October – 10th October this year (in time for their 25th anniversary and Halloween season).

It was hard as hell to choose just a few photos from my collection (I’ve taken hundreds of photos of the place), but after a lot of picking a choosing I was finally able to put it together and finish it.